


after winter's king is fallen

by charleybradburies



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Affectionate Insults, Angst, Awkward Conversations, Badass Arya, Confessions, Conversations, Developing Relationship, Episode Related, F/M, Family, Family Feels, I Don't Even Know, Jon Snow Knows Nothing, Kissing, POV Gendry, Post-Battle, Pre-Battle, Relationship Reveal, Reunions, Season/Series 08, Sibling Love, Siblings, Teasing, Touching, Winterfell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 13:59:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18661804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charleybradburies/pseuds/charleybradburies
Summary: [Follows my first Battle of Winterfell fic (before the horns are blown) but can be read on its own.]Today, the God of Death loses, and Winterfell wins. Some of its people find each other afterward.





	after winter's king is fallen

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [before the horns are blown](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18581686) by [charleybradburies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/charleybradburies/pseuds/charleybradburies). 



> ETA: The primary conversation here does assume that some other conversations have happened off-screen. They're fairly important so I think it's okay to assume until they come up in canon.
> 
> Enjoy, kudos, and comment!! Thank you for reading!!!

The horns yank him out of sleep. It’s Arya’s command to get up that really wakes him, though. Even before he’s sat up, she’s up and sorting out their clothes, tossing all of his towards him. The Arya of cold steel has returned, no trace of emotion, only calculation, until the last moment before they leave, when she crashes against him again, for one last, frantic, kiss. She pulls away only enough to set her forehead against his for a second.

“Remember: you’re not allowed to die today.”

She turns and rushes out, Needle against her side and his gift in her hand. He’s out of the room only a moment later, and she’s disappeared amongst people, everyone else rushing, too. He notices Lady Sansa amongst them, ushering children into the crypts, and thinks perhaps she’d run towards her sister, but he can’t tell. He hears his name shouted, not recognizing where it’s coming from, and then sees Davos, who’s gesturing for him to come nearer. He complies, and just like that, it’s really the beginning of the end. 

Still, he thinks the refrain she'd echoed so long ago: _"Not today."_

~~

It turns out not to be the end.

Against what had seemed like all odds, it’s the living and not the dead still standing at Winterfell when the fighting’s done, Jon - and, Gendry hopes, Arya and Bran - instead of the Night King. That noted, many who had been among the living the day before are no longer. Gendry only truly cares for a few people, and he aches knowing their roles mean many people are much more in need of them than he is, if they’re even alive at this point. He’s got no noteworthy injuries, but many people do, and there’s a surprisingly warm feeling of humanity in the way everyone helps other survivors make it to the death-covered yard - to be assessed and nursed, given food, to see if they find the face of a loved one. 

Just as he’d seen her beforehand, Sansa is the first of the Starks he sees aside from Jon, who'd already been in his sights. It must be the hair, or the height perhaps. This time, she’s bringing people out of the crypts, accepting thanks and hugs from children and their mothers, tasking many of the women with helping, having to work around the dead in the yard, including the bloody dragon, the one the Night King had killed above the Wall. She looked like she’d had to fight, too. Gendry doesn’t want to imagine that.

The yard fills up with people everywhere there’s space, and he does his best to be sure he leans against the castle wall in a place he can see her. Arya and Bran would both go to her, wouldn’t they? And Davos would check on Jon. He was sure Arya wouldn’t want to talk about the night before, but at least he needed to know she was alive. He’d gone years not knowing, so he thinks it’s fair of him to think he deserves to know that much. 

The few minutes of waiting before he sees Bran and Arya feel much worse than waiting for news of her in King’s Landing, though. The Hound finds him first, leaning back against the wall near him, also seemingly uninjured. 

“You really _are_ fucking hard to kill, aren’t you?” 

Gendry all but scoffs.

“ _I_ am?” 

“The whole bloody pack of them, too,” Clegane adds, taking out a wineskin and drinking from it with a nod over towards where Gendry had been looking. Gendry turns back to look, and the man walks away from him. Lady Sansa’s back is to him and she’s enclosed in a hug from someone, hair draped down over fur and the person cradled into her, too. They release each other after a moment, and he sees that it’s Jon, a dazed smile but tears in his eyes, Bran’s chair by their side. He breathes a sigh of relief, but the dread builds inside him anyway, at least until he sees arms he somehow can tell are _hers_ wrap around the other woman - then her head up on Sansa’s shoulder. He stands up taller and starts to actually breathe again, and then wonders if he should leave. She certainly didn’t want him to die, but did she want to see him, and now, here? 

Then she sees him, and smiles - not the small, relieved but disbelieving look she had with her head on her sister’s shoulder, but truly bright and lovely - and suddenly she’s dropped out of Sansa’s arms and bolted towards him. He notes her siblings watching her, though no one else seems to be, and still doesn’t stop either of them when she crashes back into him, her arms up on his shoulders and his around her back, tight and strong. Neither of them actually see the reactions when she moves her head only to pull him into a needy kiss, but they are joined by the time he soon sets her properly on the ground, not only by Jon and Sansa but by Davos coming down the stairs from above. A woman he doesn’t recognize is pushing Bran closer, too.

It’s Davos she first looks to, wrapping her arm into Gendry’s.

“Everything started before I remembered I wanted to thank you,” she says breathlessly.

“Thank me?” Davos says - the same voice as when he’d told Jon that Gendry hadn’t been supposed to tell him that he was Robert Baratheon’s bastard, but perhaps with more surprise.

“For saving him and Jon.”

“And Jon,” Jon repeats under his breath with a glance at Sansa, seeing the strangeness in his being relegated to the second mention. Jon’s hand comes to rest on the arm of Arya’s that’s next to him, but it’s Gendry he looks at.

“I get the feeling I’m missing something,” he says, with both confusion and humor.

Sansa chuckles, a tear leaving her eye with the movement. “That’s new.”

“Please stop undermining me,” Jon returns, clearly deciding to play around now, then looking to Arya, who somehow musters aggression even while looking exhausted.

“He was mine first,” she says, eyebrows lifted as though she’s challenging Jon to challenge her, just as Jon looks even more surprised. “We escaped King’s Landing together, coming north. Made it all the way to the Riverlands, before Stannis and his Red Witch.” 

Jon furrows his brow, understandably. She’s said it as though it explains everything, and it certainly doesn’t. He looks back at Gendry.

“That’s when the Brotherhood sold you?” 

Gendry nods, but figures that’s not enough.

“Arya tried to stop them,” he says, nodding towards her, and Jon looks at Davos.

“Was that another thing I wasn’t supposed to know?”

“The soldiers didn’t know who I was. Ser Davos wouldn’t have known,” Arya defends. Jon still looks at Davos, who does comment.

“I _did_ mention to our recently acquired men that talking about your sisters was a rather sure way for a man to get a hand at his neck. Take that as you will.”

“Also, I thought she was dead,” Gendry decides to add, because it was true. “Almost all news of House Stark that King’s Landing kept getting was either deaths or Lady Sansa. The Brotherhood had intended to sell Arya back to her mother; leaving before that was not really what I wanted you to know about me.”

Jon nods in understanding and Sansa’s smile is small and sad. He probably shouldn’t have mentioned so much, but he’d felt bad enough not giving Jon the truth early on. Arya slides her hand down his arm to his, giving a light squeeze.

“You went where you needed to be,” Bran says suddenly, with barely a trace of some unnamable emotion. “It did still bring you here. Now. As it did the rest of us.”

“The personal blacksmith to the Queen of the Dawn, I suppose,” Sansa says softly, she and Jon both nearing laughter. Arya practically growls in discontent, and Bran still adds:

“Lady of Winterfell, The Princess who was Promised, Slayer of the Night King...Arya Stark, exactly who you needed to be.”


End file.
